Ottawa Centre Refugee Action – 10 years on

Feb 06, 2026

Photo: The Noori family, with OCRA volunteers, on Canada Day 2025. Pictured are Shukria (far right), who was held captive by the Taliban for over a year before escaping and coming to Canada in July 2024, her husband Dawood (kneeling) and children Asra and Kawsar, who are thriving in school in Centretown. The three older young people (standing) are Najiba, who was arrested for attending an underground school for girls in Kabul before escaping with her brother Najib and cousin Asad and coming to Canada in June 2025. Also shown are OCRA volunteers since 2018, Joe and Supattana (far left).

Ottawa Centre Refugee Action – 10 years on

By Tanya Lary and Pat Wilson

In the fall of 2015, the Glebe community began to mobilize to support refugees, motivated by the Syrian refugee crisis and heartbreaking photos of a little boy who had drowned while his family was trying to reach asylum in Greece.

There was huge community interest. The Ottawa Centre Refugee Action (OCRA) was created, and it set up community meetings, established a website and worked with First United Church and Jewish Family Services. It started to receive donations and to organize support groups to help the families as they arrived. OCRA is entirely volunteer run. All donations are used to support refugee families; OCRA does not use any donated funds for administrative or internal purposes.

By late November of 2015, $100,000 had been raised and dozens of people had volunteered. The first family arrived just before Christmas, part of the wave of Syrian refugees that the newly elected Trudeau government had promised to bring in. By the end of 2016, 12 families, comprising 37 people, had arrived, coming from Syria, Iraq, Colombia, Ghana and the Central African Republic. Glebe residents were a huge part of this effort, providing housing and direct support. Many of these friendships continue today. In the first two years, 475 people provided financial support or had volunteered to help families navigate the complexities of arrival – finding and furnishing apartments, registering for school, learning English and accessing badly needed medical and dental services.

In 2018, the primary focus changed to bringing family members of those refugees already settled by OCRA. These were all refugees living in vulnerable circumstances in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Ethiopia. The first families settled by OCRA have played a key role in supporting their family members, but OCRA volunteers have also provided crucial help.

Since 2022, OCRA has worked to sponsor refugees from Afghanistan, with a focus on Afghan women who have fled persecution by the Taliban government. Pakistan has been a long-term host to many Afghan refugees but has started to send refugee claimants back, so there is considerable urgency to resettle these women and their families.

Highlights:

the first Canadian baby born to a Syrian family is now nine years old.

the establishment of Yasmin Catering by an OCRA arrival and a Canadian volunteer, bringing together a group of Syrian women.

A group of Glebe Collegiate students, many of them former refugees, raised funds to bring in an Afghan woman (the best friend of one of the students) and her family. They had fled to Iran and were fearful of being sent back to Afghanistan. The two friends are now reunited after OCRA succeeded in getting the Canadian government to process Afghan refugees living in Iran for resettlement in Canada.

In 2023, 34 Afghans were settled by OCRA through the federal government’s Operation Afghan Safety Program.

A total of 125 people have been sponsored and resettled by OCRA since 2015.

There is an amazing group of settlement volunteers and donors in the Glebe and elsewhere who have supported our newcomers. Thank you all!

Moving Forward

OCRA is 10 years strong, with an enduring network of volunteers, now joined by former refugees who play an important role in settling new arrivals. Please consider donating to OCRA in 2026 to support our efforts to fund the rescue and resettlement of Afghan women. Here is the link to OCRA’s website with donation instructions: https://ottawacentrerefugeeaction.ca/donate2/

Tanya Lary is an OCRA co-founder and has been its treasurer since 2015. Pat Wilson has been an OCRA volunteer since January 2016. She retired as a lawyer in 2017and has helped bring to Ottawa more than 25 refugees and families from Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan. She was recognized in 2025 with the King Charles Coronation medal.